


Roses

by cafeanna



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Black Whale Arc, Kurapika Being Himself, Kuroro Also Being Himself, M/M, Oito-Kuroro Sibling Theory, deep talks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 06:42:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29449482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cafeanna/pseuds/cafeanna
Summary: “Mm, so you never thought about it.” Kuroro says, curling his fingers. “Such an interesting dichotomy for you. My dear sister is painted up as the Madonna in your mind, all virgin Marys and sweet sleeping princes.” He looks down at his hands, mouth quirking with a joke. Dark eyes flashing mischief. “Does that make me the whore then?”His nose wrinkles. "What the fuck is wrong with you, Lucilfer?"OR, Kuroro and Kurapika talk over rosary beads.
Relationships: Kurapika/Kuroro Lucifer | Chrollo Lucifer
Comments: 8
Kudos: 46





	Roses

“Did you know rosaries used to be made out of roses?”

Kurapika ignores him, eyes straining in the dim light.

He can feel the beginnings of a headache kneading against his temple, irritation at Kuroro’s sticky-fingered tendencies and his own lack of self-control.

However, in his defense, how else was he supposed to react to catching a thief? He had heard the rustling of a rat in the Queen’s bedchamber and had thrown open the door to find Kuroro bent over her jewelry box, fingers tangled with the Queen’s rosary and he had just—snapped.

Kurapika turns his gaze back to the task at hand, on his knees, bowing under the secretaire to gather the wayward beads that had rolled across the carpet.

He hears a sigh, muffled, far off, and glances back at his unfortunate company.

The Spider head is sitting on the floor below the lit lamp, crisscross like a child, bent forward with his elbows on his knees as he threads the broken pieces back together. Twelve dark beads before a smaller break, repeated into a circle.

It’s an old thing.

Was an old thing. _Still_ is an old thing.

When it snapped between their clenched hands Kuroro had looked at him with something of annoyance before dropping down to gather the pieces, fishing some new string from his coat pocket and tying it off with the chipped edge of his nail. “Be a good lamb and fetch the rest for me, would you?” And, out of options, caught in the car crash jolt of it, Kurapika had simply done as he asked.

And was regretting every second of it as he felt Lucilfer’s eyes on his back.

Kurapika glances behind him again, annoyed, and catches Kuroro’s dark gaze. Eyes wide and innocuous.

And a little too much like Queen Oito now that he’s looking properly.

His teeth clench.

“Did you hear me?” Kuroro asks, polite.

The headache is migrating, edging to a pulse behind his eye. “No.” He says, through teeth, finger bumping against the edge of what might be another bead and curls his fingers around it.

“It quite a process, actually.” Kuroro continues, oppose to nothing. “We used to leave rose petals simmering in a pan all night until they turned black. Then, we would strain them and take the tar and roll them into beads, pierce them with a needle we found from an old sewing kit. We would leave them in the sun until they dried and hardened, and then polish them off with the rose water so they would shine. Pretty as heretic.”

His voice is almost mediative when he speaks. Reverent with the rapture of memory, mouth soft against the roll of the words as if it were something dear to him.

And how Kurapika wishes he could _take it_ —

“And the best part is, they always smelled of roses.”

Kurapika might not know much of Ryuseigai horticulture, but he cannot place roses amongst the sun-burned backdrop of a nameless nation. Then again, he cannot place Queen Oito with her soft hands and hesitant smiles. But, her signature rose scent was something of common knowledge among the nobles and staff. A preference with no origin.

_Until now._

The reunion of the Queen and her long-lost brother had been one marked in blood. A macabre symphony of momentum that strung Kuroro with chains and painted Kurapika’s hands. Time turning circular. The invader of the Queen’s quarters—and face of Kurapika’s nightmares—lifted his chin, swollen eye and busted lip, and smiled with bloody teeth at their downy queen.

His sister.

Kurapika’s knuckles still ache from the punches, or perhaps the gripping. It had taken everything in him not to lash out when his Queen explained the circumstances to him—a corner of the world forgotten and two lost souls marooned in its blistering heat. 

Kuroro is still talking, going on as if Kurapika were still listening.

“Like this,” Kuroro lifts the broken pieces into the light, “I had one similar.”

“What happened to it?” He asks, dryly. “Did you pawn it?”

“I buried it.”

He says it so casually, but there is a long, deliberate pause that Kurapika sits in. Jaw aching, temple throbbing, his hand closing around the rosary bead.

“With a friend.” He amends, as if Kurapika wanted clarification. “The very first I lost. The very first I lost after my blood abandoned me.” Kuroro scratches the string through the eyelet of a bead. “It seemed right at the time, and so fitting as we were able to bury them in hallowed ground.” 

_Probably a Spider,_ Kurapika realizes, numbly, as he rises up on his haunches. The aches in his body come easier these days. The sudden surge and break of adrenaline in finding Kuroro alone in Queen Oito’s room flushing through his veins in a rush of too much, not enough. He leans back against the secretaire.

Kuroro doesn’t seem to notice. “I don’t suppose she ever mentioned that.”

“No, she didn’t.” Kurapika says, fingers curling. Professionalism be damned, he does not want to be _cordial_ with Lucilfer. He wants to rant. Maybe scream. Make a noose of chains and finally, possibly, having some peace—

“Her Majesty never talks about her childhood.”

If Kuroro notices the barbs, then he doesn’t acknowledge them. “Yes, I suppose she wouldn’t. She was always like that.”

“Different?”

“No. She’s as much a capable con-artist as me. She would have kept her background spotty, no warm memories to linger on while she’s culling her way to queendom.” Kuroro mumbles, eyes fixated on the rosary as he picks at a knot in the string.

Half-occupied, he adds, “We very similar in that way. The pair of us a couple of hungry, terrifying things. We both dug our way out of the slums by our own devices. My dear sister with her beauty and cunning, and I with the Spider.”

“So, _different_.”

“I suppose leaving a child to waste in the desert is a different sort of crime than what you’re used to, yes.”

“You resent her?” Kurapika probes, ignoring the slip in Lucilfer’s smile. Perhaps he can ward the Queen off reconnecting if she knows the horror her brother has become.

“I forgive her.” Kuroro amends. “I cannot fault her for wanting a comfortable life. Done a hundred times over, the two of us would have given anything for a scrap of comfort.” Kuroro lifts the rosary, laced delicately between his fingers as if he were praying. “I’m curious now. Which do you prefer?”

“What?”

“The cold calculation or outright violence. Which do you prefer?”

Kurapika’s brows pinch. “I don’t think—”

“Mm, so you never thought about it.” Kuroro says, curling his fingers. “Such an interesting dichotomy for you. My dear sister is painted up as the Madonna in your mind, all virgin Marys and sweet sleeping princes.” He looks down at his hands, mouth quirking with a joke. Dark eyes flashing mischief. “Does that make me the whore then?”

His nose wrinkles.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Lucilfer?”

“Alright, you’re done playing for the day. I get it.” Kuroro tosses the rosary and Kurapika catches it. The strand of beads circling his wrist.

It feels right in his hands.

Something sacred and precious and—

“What’s that in your hand?” Kurapika hisses, eyes narrowing on the palm stuck in the folds of a coat.

“Ah, I didn’t think you would notice.”

Kuroro shows him his fist.

“That string was too short.” Kurapika remarks, showing the bead in his own fingers. 

Of course, Lucilfer would mess it up.

“Fix it.”

“It’s really no matter.” Kuroro says, thumb rolling across the four beads that nestled in the curve of his palm. He slips them into an inner pocket of his patchwork coat. Holds his hand over it as if swearing to the black heart beneath. “These were mine anyway.”

Kurapika cuts him off at the door.

Kuroro’s mouth quirks. “Kurapika,” he says, mused, “I didn’t think you would be hesitant for me to go.”

“What were you doing here anyway?” Kurapika snarls, raking his gaze over the man before him. The bruised nose bridge, the cut lip, the eyebags. Exhaustion so familiar it makes his lip curl. “I’ll know if you’re lying.” He adds, feeling the phantom sting of Dowsing Chain on his ring finger, a vibration of nen that feels almost violent with Kuroro’s answering shrug.

“I needed a moment to gather myself.” He concedes, and in that same sinking tone, “I figured you might want to do the same. Your list of enemies grows every day.” 

He waits for the twitch of a brow, the vault of the lip, but nothing comes. Kuroro’s expression is as it was in the backseat of that car in Yorknew. Impassive. Composed.

And Kurapika left snarling at the bit.

“Hisoka is not _my_ enemy.”

The smooth fold of expression turning somber with the crease of the brow, as if chiding him. “And how long do you think that will last when he finds out that that child is kin to me?” In the tilt of his head, the corner of his mouth, Kurapika senses no malice, no ill-will, but the venom of the statement sinks into him all the same.

Nervous hands, curling fists.

His eye socket throbs.

He had been delighted at the reveal of Hisoka’s motives. The slight of hand, the flicker of a card—Hisoka’s intentions marked with needle-point fingers and too wide grins. The clown stomping out the Spiders he once ran with. A revenge plot for the ages.

But he was not killing for killing’s sake.

He was killing people who meant something to Lucilfer. Because they belonged to Lucilfer.

And that logic would stretch to accommodate family.

Kurapika watches numbly as Kuroro steps around him to the door, turning back once he reaches the handle. “I do hope you and I can come to some consensus. In-fighting will only bring more bloodshed, more lost limbs.”

“You’re the one loosing limbs.” Kurapika snaps, with heat.

“And you’ll lose an employer.” Kuroro says, hanging back. The smile on his mouth is not cruel, but not kind either. “You care about my dear sister too much to let that clown near her or her child. And I protect my own with my teeth if I have to, that’s how we’re similar.”

“We are not,” Kurapika says through clenched teeth, “the same.”

“Like my sister and me, the same but different.” Kuroro’s head tilts, cat-like. “But you’re more of the cold calculation tactic like her.” The doorhandle turns under his palm. “You run your crowd of admires through the mire and let Hisoka do the dirty work of your revenge, but when worse comes to worst, you’ll be the one to snuff me out, is that right?”

Kurapika knows he shouldn’t.

But his teeth ache with effort. “Yes.”

“And that’s me too.” Kuroro says, voice cool like dark water. “The finishing move belongs to the boss.” He opens the door and it yawns under his hand, a long rectangle of light slipping across dark hair and bruised skin. “Good night, Kurapika. Sweet dreams.”

And then he’s gone.

Kurapika forces his hands to unclench after a moment.

The rosary unspooling in his hand, the tasseled end brushing his knee. An oddly barbed cross tarnished with age.

He can make out voices beyond the door, the rest of the staff preparing for the return of their queen from her evening out. The grand façade to keep things normal for the outside looking in.

He takes a deep breath and feels it shutter through him. That keyed up energy twisting down his spine to his stomach, a slow pill of unease beginning to spread as he goes about setting the room to rights, pushing back the chairs, the carpet, and the rosary beads hung on the vanity set. 

Vaguely, he sends up a prayer that she won’t notice.

Though, most likely, she will.

And then he’ll have to report to her about what happened this evening.

Kurapika pinches the bead between his fingers and holds it up to the light. Dark brown, a lacquer of polish finishing off the top. He can see no place where the bead might distinguish itself by either wood or packed roses, but he doesn’t want to use the nen to split it.

It’s too precious.

And Kurapika has always respected mementos of the past. His, and other people’s. 

He supposes the four limbs gone were Kuroro’s—his conquest and Hisoka’s—this next one might be his still, but—

He glances back at the empty cradle in the corner of the room; the polished carving of seashell pink and mother of pearl, lined with gold clothe and linen, edged with the decorative symbols of Kakin aristocracy. A smaller replica of her mother’s bed. 

Like a blooming Aphrodite.

Empty, waiting. Befitting of a sapling royal, too young to know the game she played and too young still to know the dangers of being born into something sacred and secret.

He tucks the bead into the breast pocket of his jacket and glances over his reflection in the mirror. The light of the hallway blinds him for a moment, but out of the dark, his mind is resolute.

He will protect the Queen and her daughter, and by that extension Kuroro too, but he will not forget himself and the vows he made. He will not lose with so much on the line.

**Author's Note:**

> Nothing’s more romantic than realizing you can’t kill your greatest enemy because of a deadlock of loyalty and plot devices. 
> 
> Kuroro is still too much of a monster for Kurapika to love here, but it’s flaking. I’ve got a system. He’s got to see him as a human, not an incarnate of everything terrible and wrong with him, first. And Kuroro is growing attachments. 
> 
> I just really wanted to do a little thing for them and this clocked me on the head mid-caffeine headache. And I very much dig the Oito-Kuroro Sibling Theory.
> 
> -cafeanna


End file.
